Filtering by
- All Subjects: undocumented college students
- Creators: McGuire, Keon
The oppressive legislative policies and polarizing media narratives of undocu/DACAmented Latinx im/migrants in the United States have created unfavorable campus climates, which have further marginalized those students in higher education who fit into this category. As a result of Donald Trump’s presidency and rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that soon followed, undocu/DACAmented Latinx students are experiencing an increase in stress, anxiety, and fear to the point that they become silent, depressed, and feel the need to advocate more for their existence and worth on campus. My critical ethnographic case study investigates the everyday experiences of Mexican undocu/DACAmented students enrolled at a public university in Arizona – a state that borders Mexico – as they pursue their undergraduate degrees in the Trump era. This study is guided by critical race theory and LatCrit, sense of belonging, and resistance capital theoretical frameworks, and seeks to answer the following: (a) how race and racism shape their collegiate experiences, (b) where these collegians find belongingness to persist towards graduation while navigating an anti-im/migrant sociopolitical climate, and (c) how these students exercise agency via their activism efforts. The broader case study includes individual collaborative interviews, twelve months of participatory field observations, and a collection of documents. This study aims to expand the field of higher education’s understanding of how federal, state, and institutional policies and policymakers affect undocu/DACAmented students’ experiences in and persistence through college, highlight the agency exercised and assets these collegians bring with them to college, and offer research, policy, and practical recommendations for higher education and student affairs institutional agents.
shift in how teacher evaluation policies govern the evaluation of their performance.
Spurred by federal mandates, teachers have been increasingly held accountable for their
students’ academic achievement, most notably through the use of value-added models
(VAMs)—a statistically complex tool that aims to isolate and then quantify the effect of
teachers on their students’ achievement. This increased focus on accountability ultimately
resulted in numerous lawsuits across the U.S. where teachers protested what they felt
were unfair evaluations informed by invalid, unreliable, and biased measures—most
notably VAMs.
While New Mexico’s teacher evaluation system was labeled as a “gold standard”
due to its purported ability to objectively and accurately differentiate between effective
and ineffective teachers, in 2015, teachers filed suit contesting the fairness and accuracy
of their evaluations. Amrein-Beardsley and Geiger’s (revise and resubmit) initial analyses
of the state’s teacher evaluation data revealed that the four individual measures
comprising teachers’ overall evaluation scores showed evidence of bias, and specifically,
teachers who taught in schools with different student body compositions (e.g., special
education students, poorer students, gifted students) had significantly different scores
than their peers. The purpose of this study was to expand upon these prior analyses by
investigating whether those conclusions still held true when controlling for a variety of
confounding factors at the school, class, and teacher levels, as such covariates were not
included in prior analyses.
Results from multiple linear regression analyses indicated that, overall, the
measures used to inform New Mexico teachers’ overall evaluation scores still showed
evidence of bias by school-level student demographic factors, with VAMs potentially
being the most susceptible and classroom observations being the least. This study is
especially unique given the juxtaposition of such a highly touted evaluation system also
being one where teachers contested its constitutionality. Study findings are important for
all education stakeholders to consider, especially as teacher evaluation systems and
related policies continue to be transformed.